Press Day 2026

Along with these two operas, the festival’s varied programme in its anniversary year – running from 22 July to 23 August – also includes the world premiere of two pieces on the Werkstattbühne stage, The Passion of the Common Man and YUM!, as well as a production of Donizetti’s L'elisir d'amore by the Opera Studio. In addition to this there are orchestral concerts by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, chamber music concerts, and a series of events at the Young People’s Festival.

A number of exhibitions and projects have been organised this summer to mark the 80th anniversary of the Bregenz Festival. The highpoint is a big singalong on 1 August, where 6,500 people from all over the Lake Constance region will gather in the lake stage auditorium to sing well-known melodies from operas that have been performed on the lake stage over eight decades. These singers will join forces with choirs, soloists and an instrumental ensemble drawn from the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra.

In all, some 228,000 tickets are available for the just under 80 events scheduled at this year’s Bregenz Festival (including the dress rehearsal of La traviata). The new lake stage production of La traviata, which will be performed 28 times this summer, has been completely sold out since Easter – earlier than ever before in the festival’s history. For all other events, tickets are still available in all categories.

Staging intimacy and fragility: La traviata debuts on the lake stage
Few operas speak to us so movingly about love, social pressures and the longing for self-determination in life as Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata. Even though it’s one of the most performed operas in the world, it has never been staged on the lake at Bregenz throughout the past eight decades. The opera’s Bregenz debut will be on 22 July.

Director Damiano Michieletto and stage designer Paolo Fantin have chosen to set the story of La traviata in the glittering 1920s – an era of economic prosperity, extravagant parties and social change. For Michieletto these years offer an image of a society that devotes itself to pleasure and, in the process, loses sight of what’s essential. “The 1920s have become a symbol of excess, partying and hedonism,” he says. “They match the atmosphere of the opera perfectly – and also the opulence of the lake stage.”

The dominant element of the production is a monumental, 28 metre high mirror which rises up out of Lake Constance. It can be seen as symbolising Violetta’s fate. As though in slow motion, the stage set shows the moment of fragility when the mirror falls to the floor – before it shatters into countless pieces.

Not magnifying emotions, but making them visible
Damiano Michieletto does not feel that the intimacy of the opera is contradicted by the scale of the lake stage. The challenge, he says, is not to magnify the emotions but to render them visible – with images that follow the characters’ feelings. The aim is to preserve the intimacy of La traviata and make it possible to experience it on the big lake stage, he says. A cinematic narrative style, symbolic spaces and video projections are intended to draw the audience into Violetta’s mind and memories. To achieve this, there have been two rehearsals per day on the lake stage since mid June. The production team is working together with 25 soloists, around 20 dancers, 20 extras plus the Bregenz Festival Chorus on a production in which as much as weighting will be given to the quiet moments between characters as to large-dimension images.

Damiano Michieletto is one of the most sought-after opera directors of his generation internationally. He has directed productions at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (London), the Salzburg Festival, La Scala Milan, the Teatro La Fenice and the Theater an der Wien (Vienna), among other opera houses. For many years, he has worked closely with set designer Paolo Fantin. The music directors of La traviata are Kirill Karabits and Pietro Rizzo, both of whom will be conducting at Bregenz for the first time. Joining set designer Paolo Fantin are lighting designer Alessandro Carletti and video designer Roland Horvath, while Carla Teti will design the costumes.

The moon, the Middle Ages and a reluctant hero: The Excursions of Mr Brouček
The opening night of La traviata is followed the next day, 23 July, by Leoš Janáček’s opera The Excursions of Mr Brouček at the Festspielhaus. Premiered in 1920, it is one the most original but also most seldom performed of the Czech composer’s works for the stage. With subtle humour, bizarre characters and trenchant irony, Janáček holds a mirror up to a society which in its complacency, indifference, and intolerance of anything new appears to be strikingly reminiscent of our own.

The eponymous character, Matěj Brouček, is a self-satisfied property-owner in Prague who actually wants nothing more than to drink his beer in peace. Instead of which he’s catapulted to the moon and then transported to the Prague of the 15th century. On his fantastical journeys, Brouček encounters people who confront him with idealism and art, courage and responsibility – things he would much rather steer clear of.

A bizarre but penetrating look at our times
For the director Yuval Sharon, Janáček’s opera is about a person who is ensconced in their comfort zone and not willing to learn from their mistakes. In times in which societies increasingly are isolating themselves from each other, The Excursions of Mr Brouček is more relevant than ever, Sharon believes. Behind the grotesquery and comedy lies a precise and no less incisive observation of human behaviour and societal mechanisms, he says.

Collaborating with stage and costume designer Jon Bausor, Sharon has created a production that in visual terms draws on Dadaism and the Theatre of the Absurd. Dream and reality, history and fantasy merge seamlessly into one another, creating a space which allows Janáček’s satirical view of society to achieve its full impact.

The US director Yuval Sharon has made a name for himself internationally with his unusual and award-winning productions. He was the first American to direct at the Bayreuth Festival, and is artistic director of Detroit Opera until the end of the 2025/26 season. In his works, he is constantly in search of new narrative modes in music theatre, and sets rarely performed operas in a contemporary context. The music director will be the Czech conductor Robert Jindra, who is regarded as an expert interpreter of Janáček.